


Love Alone Is Not Enough

by burn_me_down



Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Brotherhood, Clay Has Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Clay Spenser, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Team, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22438228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burn_me_down/pseuds/burn_me_down
Summary: Clay shows up beaten, but refuses to tell anyone who did it, or why. After he promises it’s taken care of and won’t happen again, his brothers let it go - a decision they will come to bitterly regret.
Relationships: Clay Spenser & Bravo Team, Lisa Davis & Clay Spenser
Comments: 220
Kudos: 400





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostinanotherworld24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinanotherworld24/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank all of y’all for the wonderful prompts y’all shared with me! I have so many more ideas to work from now. :)
> 
> This story is not fully outlined yet, but I’m guessing it will be about five or six chapters long. **Warning** for eventual themes and discussions of drug use (including non-consensual drug use), addiction, and overdose.
> 
> For **lostinanotherworld24,** who is the sweetest. Happy belated birthday, love.

Davis comes to base early, which is why she’s the one who finds Clay.

She has been around Bravo long enough to know that several of them sometimes sleep in their cages, so she eases the door open quietly when entering. Sure enough, the hammock strung in Spenser’s cage is visibly weighted, and there’s a cowboy-booted foot hanging over the edge. She chews at her lip, debates just turning around and leaving so Bravo Six can get what is probably some much-needed sleep, but it’s too late. Clay apparently heard her. With a groan that’s audible from across the room, he struggles for a few seconds, then manages to sit up.

Lisa’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.

“Oh, _shit,”_ she whispers.

His face is so battered that she might not have recognized him at first glance, if she hadn’t already known who he was. One eye is swollen shut, his cheek is badly bruised and puffy, he’s got a fat lip, and there’s dried blood crusted thickly beneath a busted nose that looks like it might be a little crooked.

Clay just sits in his hammock, hands resting loosely in his lap. Doesn’t make an attempt to say anything. Though he’s looking in her direction, she can’t really tell whether his gaze is focused. Whether he has even truly registered that she’s there.

Davis takes careful steps closer, keeping her hands visible just to make sure he knows she’s not a threat, in case he’s disoriented and doesn’t remember where he is. Alarm gnaws at her stomach, because this... this could be bad. He could have a head injury. Does she need to call someone? Does he need a hospital?

“Hey, Clay,” she says softly. Without intending to, she has started imitating Sonny; there’s even a hint of a drawl to her words when she asks, “You okay in there?”

Clay blinks his good eye and manages to focus on Lisa. He nods, reaching up to poke at his face with a wince.

Lisa flinches sympathetically. “You might not want to touch that,” she tells him. God, he looks _bad._

What the hell could have happened? This looks like more than a bar fight. Like he was _beaten,_ and the thought makes anger curl into her gut alongside the concern.

Clay leans forward slightly, tucking an arm around his abdomen, and Lisa realizes there are almost certainly more injuries hidden beneath his grimy, blood-speckled blue shirt.

Someone did this to him. Once they figure out who, there will be hell to pay.

Davis starts to ask Clay if he’s gotten medical care yet, but stops herself, immediately realizing that a nurse or doctor would have cleaned him up and fixed his nose. He must have come straight here after getting the absolute hell beaten out of him.

In a tightly controlled tone, she asks, “Do you need medical?”

He looks down, giving the slightest shake of his head.

She isn’t sure she could possibly feel less convinced. “Clay. _Do you need a hospital?_ And don’t you even think about lying to me.”

Spenser licks his lips, wincing as his tongue passes over a weeping cut, and then says hoarsely, “No, I think I’m okay. Just... sore.”

“You don’t look okay,” Lisa parries.

He sighs. “Looks worse than it is.” Gritting his teeth, he manages to get up from the hammock, moving enough like a very old man to tell her that ‘sore’ is probably a massive understatement.

Using her best officer tone, she orders, “Take off your shirt.”

Clay looks at her, raising the one eyebrow he can still move. “Why, Miz Davis,” he drawls in an exaggerated, scandalized Southern accent.

She rolls her eyes. “That’s _Ensign_ Davis to you, Petty Officer. I want to see if you look like you’re bleeding internally, so take off your damn shirt.”

“I’m not,” he assures her with a level of sincere certainty that is very, very worrying coming from him.

When she just stares, he sighs again. Slowly, with a lot of wincing and quiet swearing, he starts trying to work the shirt up and over his head. After about 20 seconds, Davis can’t stand it anymore, and moves forward to help.

With the shirt finally off, Lisa takes a step back and exhales through pursed lips.

The good news is that she doesn’t see anything that would indicate, at least to her largely untrained eye, that Clay is in imminent danger of keeling over and dying.

The bad news is, well, just about everything else.

Clay’s chest and abdomen are mottled with bruising, and a quick circuit around him reveals that his back is as well. The pattern left by boot treads is clearly visible in several places, which means he was kicked and/or stomped while he was down, and Lisa is going to fucking _murder_ someone.

How is he not angry right now? How is he just standing there, subdued, staring at her with a weary, resigned gaze?

“Lisa,” he says quietly, “please don’t-”

“Who did this?” She shoves her hands into her pockets, trying to hide the fact that they’re shaking with anger.

Clay looks past her. Doesn’t answer.

Doing her absolute best imitation of Naima, Davis asks, “Clay, _what happened?”_

“I...” He trails off. Sways on his feet, but manages to get a hand out to brace himself against a metal shelf before Lisa has a chance to move to catch him. She notices that his knuckles are busted, on both hands, which makes her feel a hint of fierce satisfaction beneath all the fury.

Their boy fought back. Of course he did. The problem is that he obviously lost - badly.

“I can’t tell you,” he finally says.

Davis clenches her teeth tightly enough that she can feel a muscle ticking in her jaw. Her friend’s pig-headed stubbornness is pissing her off, but the hollow, lost note in his voice scares her a little too. It reminds her too much of when she visited him in the hospital after Manila; when she reached out to him and just ended up cutting herself on all his broken edges.

If that’s what it comes to, she’ll do it again. He would do it for her, too. If she ever let him.

There are several different battles she could choose to fight at the moment, and she needs to pick the right one. She suspects that pushing harder on the ‘who’ and ‘why’ will just make Clay shut down even more, so, as much as it rankles, she lets that go for now.

“You need to get checked out by an actual medical professional,” she tells him firmly. “Judging by the dizziness, you’ve probably got a concussion, and might have broken ribs too. At the very least, you need to get your nose reduced.”

He groans, reaching up to prod gingerly at it. “Shit. They broke my nose?”

 _They._ Lisa files that little tidbit away for later. “Yeah, Pretty Boy, they did. You’re not looking so pretty right at the moment.”

Clay gives her a tragic, wounded puppy look out of his one visible eye, as though she has just signed his death warrant by insisting he receive actual medical care.

“Trent might be able to fix the nose,” she says, “but I’m pretty sure he’ll agree with me that you need an actual doctor to check out the rest.”

At the mention of his teammate, Clay goes a shade paler and sways again, tightening his grip on the shelf to keep from falling. Lisa moves a couple steps closer so she can at least try to break his fall if he starts to go down.

It doesn’t take long for her mind to seize on what is probably the source of Spenser’s distress.

“Clay. Were you planning on trying to hide this from your team?”

He pointedly does not look at her or acknowledge the question in any manner whatsoever. Which means yes.

For a competent and intelligent operator who reads a lot and speaks respectable portions of somewhere around nine languages, _God_ he can be an absolute dumbass sometimes.

“You look like you got hit by a truck. They would have to be blind and deaf and _dead_ to not notice. In fact, I should probably call Jason right now to give him a heads-up.”

As far as Lisa is concerned, the sooner Jason and Trent can get here and take over deciding what to do with their youngest brother, the better.

Clay groans.

“Come on.” Lisa moves up closer, sliding beneath his free arm, trying to support him without putting pressure on any visible bruises or anything that might be broken, which is easier said than done. “You need to sit down before you fall down.”

She manages to get him into an actual chair, where he sits hunched over his ribs, expression glazed and distant in a way that she really doesn’t like. Something tells her he won’t be operating again for a while, but she keeps that thought to herself. He’s already miserable enough as it is. No need to add on.

The temperature in here is pleasant but Clay has started shivering anyway, goosebumps visible on his bare arms. Lisa brings over a blanket, tucking it carefully around him and getting a whispered “Thanks” in response.

“You’re welcome. Don’t move,” she warns, because while Clay doesn’t _look_ like he’s planning to make a break for it the minute her back is turned, she’s been his friend for long enough to know better than to assume.

After receiving a vague nod in return, she moves across the room and calls Jason.

Or calls Jason’s phone, anyway. He isn’t actually the person who answers.

“Jason Hayes’s phone,” Sonny drawls. “He’s drivin’ at the moment, so this here is his butler.”

Lisa rolls her eyes, her chest warming with fondness. She’d forgotten that Sonny’s truck is in the shop right now, so he has been catching rides with Jason.

(Beneath everything else, the affection for Sonny and the worry about Clay, there’s a hint of old, well-worn sadness at what she knows to be the reason behind Jason’s reluctance to talk on the phone while driving, but Davis doesn’t let herself dwell on it.)

“Hey, Sonny,” she says.

“Ensign Davis!” He sounds uncharacteristically cheerful for this early. “What do you need on this fine mornin’?”

He seems happy. She hates that she has to ruin that.

“Uh.” She clears her throat, suddenly feeling oddly lost for words. “Listen, I was just calling to give Jason a heads-up that something has happened. With Clay.” She glances over at Spenser. He’s still sitting where she left him, staring blankly and doing an excellent impression of a man who can’t hear himself being talked about.

Sonny’s pause lasts just a beat too long. Humor gone, he asks, “What exactly is ‘something’?” Then quickly follows it up with, “Hang on. I’m puttin’ you on speaker. Okay, go ahead.”

Knowing that Jason is now listening too, Lisa takes a deep breath. “Clay was here when I came in this morning, sleeping in his cage.” She tries to figure out how best to phrase the next part. “He’s pretty busted up and won’t tell me how it happened. I think he might need medical care, but he doesn’t want that either.”

Sonny swears.

A bit fainter and further away, Jason says tightly, “Keep him there. We’ll all be in soon. Trent can take a look at him when we get there.”

“Copy that,” Davis says. She ends the call and glances up to see that Clay has listed to the side a bit and is now staring morosely at the floor. He looks so much like a child dreading punishment that it makes Lisa’s throat ache.

She goes to sit next to him. He startles a bit, then relaxes, fixing his eye on her face. “They’re gonna kill me, aren’t they?” He asks, sounding quiet and sad.

Carefully, Davis reaches out to pat the small section of his forearm that’s protruding from beneath the blanket. “They’re gonna do whatever it takes to make sure you get better, Clay,” she tells him. After a brief pause, she can’t resist adding, “And _then_ they might kill you.”

Especially if he doesn’t give up on this ‘I can’t tell you what happened’ bullshit. Someone left _boot marks_ on him, and if that pisses _her_ off, she can’t imagine how strongly Clay’s teammates are going to feel about it.


	2. Chapter 2

It starts out as such a nice morning.

From the moment Jason wakes up, he feels good, his body about as easy and limber as it ever gets after all these decades of abuse. He flows through his morning routine with barely more than a twinge of pain.

On his way to the base, he picks up Sonny, who is also in high spirits, declaring optimistically that he just _knows_ today is going to be a good day.

Naturally, that positive outlook doesn’t even have a chance to last through the whole drive.

Sonny cheerfully answers Jason’s phone, initially growing even more chipper when he hears Davis on the other end of the call - but then she tells him something, and the entire atmosphere inside the truck shifts in an instant.

Jason feels it more than he sees it, sensing Bravo Three’s sudden tension without even looking over at the passenger seat. He maintains his steady grip on the steering wheel, takes measured breaths, and focuses on driving rather than letting his mind spin off into speculation about what might have made Sonny react like that.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to wait long to find out, because Sonny puts the call on speaker.

The news Davis breaks to them isn’t as bad as Jason was fearing - no one is dead or near death, nothing damaged beyond repair - but what it is is baffling.

Clay hurt but refusing to explain why? Trying to evade needed medical attention? The kid _knows_ better, and once they reach base, Jason is sure as hell going to remind him of that.

Jason and Sonny pull in right at the same time that Trent does, which is good, because Jason wants their medic to look Spenser over. They all trust Trent, possibly more than his medical skills actually warrant. If Clay is going to be willing to listen to anyone about this, it’ll probably be Sawyer.

They find Spenser, blanket-wrapped, sitting in a chair just outside his cage. Davis is perched next to him. She looks up when they enter; Clay doesn’t, keeping his face angled away. Only the heightened tension in his body language, the way he gathers the blanket a bit more closely around his shoulders, reveals that he even heard them come in at all.

Davis comes to meet them, and Trent greets her with a quiet, “What have we got?”

She shakes her head. Presses her lips together until they pale. Forces them back open to say, “His face is busted up pretty bad. He seems woozy, so maybe a concussion. There are a lot of bruises on his torso, and...”

“And what?” There’s a dangerous edge to Sonny’s voice.

Davis glances away. “And some of them are shaped like boots.”

The silence that follows that statement crackles like an oncoming storm. They all look at Clay. He pointedly ignores them.

Trent is the first of them to speak. “Okay,” he says, even and calm. “I’ll take a look.”

He doesn’t even bother trying to convince the others to stay back. They follow him across the room to Clay, who waits until they are directly in front of him, sighs deeply, and then lifts his chin like a man facing the executioner.

Whatever Jason was expecting, this is worse.

“Holy _shit,”_ Sonny says, and then turns around and stalks stiffly over to his own cage.

Somehow Trent stays absolutely dispassionate. He runs his fingers carefully through the matted blond curls to check for bumps, humming under his breath at the same instant that Clay hisses and tries to pull away. “You dizzy?” Trent asks. “Sensitive to light and noise?”

“Yeah,” Clay admits tonelessly.

“Thought so. Pretty sure you’ve got a concussion. You’ll need scans to make sure it’s not anything worse.”

Spenser opens his mouth like he’s thinking about arguing, but then wilts a little and closes it again without saying a word.

“Nose is definitely broken,” Trent continues. “Not sure about the cheekbone. Jaw seems okay.”

“Can you fix it?” Clay asks hopefully. “My nose?”

Trent shakes his head. “You need to see a doctor anyway, so no, I’m gonna leave that to the professionals. Wouldn’t want to get blamed for messing up your pretty face.”

Clay tries to smile at that, but winces and stops halfway through. Just that small movement is enough to make his swollen, gashed lip start seeping blood again.

“Can we move this for a minute?” Trent tugs gently at the corner of the blanket, and Clay turns loose of it, letting it fall open so they can see his torso.

_Jesus._

Well, there are the contusions Davis warned them about.

Still cool as a cucumber, Trent does a quick visual sweep, but doesn’t make a move to touch any of the bruising. “Did you get a look at his back?” He asks Davis.

“Yeah.”

“See anything that might indicate possible spinal damage?”

She considers that question for a few seconds. “I don’t think so. More bruises like these, but toward his sides, not near the spine. No visible swelling or anything that I could see.”

“Okay, good.” Trent turns his attention back to Clay. “Do you have any tingling or numbness in your legs or feet? Arms or hands?”

“No and no,” Clay responds.

“Neck pain?”

“It’s a little sore, but nothing compared to this damn headache.”

Trent gives him a small, humorless smile. “Yeah, concussions will do that. Are your legs or feet injured?”

“Not really,” Clay says. “Maybe some bruises, but nothing’s busted. I can walk.”

Trent nods. “In that case, I think you’re probably all right to get up, but I want you to not move your neck too much just in case, okay? Don’t try to turn your head.”

“It’s been a whole night, Trent. I’ve already moved around plenty,” Clay points out.

Trent and Jason both just stare at him.

He gives in. “Okay. Fine. I won’t turn my head.”

The sound of a door opening heralds the arrival of Brock and Ray, whose friendly conversation stutters to an abrupt halt as soon as they get a look at Clay. Brock gives a quiet, tuneless whistle, and Ray asks evenly but with an edge, “What happened here?”

Jason, who has been using every ounce of self-control to keep his mouth shut while Trent evaluated their boy, finally lets himself say, “Well, that’s the million-dollar question. Isn’t it, Spenser?”

Clay evades his gaze. Doesn’t respond.

Now that he feels reasonably confident that Spenser isn’t at immediate risk of dying, Jason loosens up the reins on his anger. “Let me be a little bit clearer,” he says, his voice as hard as flint. “I want you to tell us what happened.”

Nothing.

_“Now.”_

Clay fidgets.

“That’s an order, Bravo Six.”

Unwisely, Spenser tries for a joke. “Would you believe me if I said I fell down the stairs?”

“Were the stairs wearing boots at the time?”

“Um... Yes?”

Jason fixes him with the same flat glare he uses on Emma and Mikey to let them know that _This is serious and I’m not amused. Stop messing around._

(Jesus. When did he start _parenting_ his men?)

Clay finally looks at Jason, sort of, but without really meeting his eyes. Any attempt at humor crumbles away. “I can’t.” His voice is quiet and so blank that it raises the hair on the back of Jason’s neck, imbues him with an unshakable sense that something is very off here. “But,” Spenser adds, “I can promise that it won’t ever happen again.”

Not fucking good enough.

Jason glances over at Ray, who immediately dips his chin slightly and starts herding away Davis and the rest of the team, saying, “Come on. Let’s give them a minute.”

They don’t actually leave the room, just pull back a bit. Several of them head to their own cages. Lisa goes to check on Sonny, who is still sulking in his.

Jason knows they’re all probably trying to eavesdrop, but he still appreciates being given some space to talk to the maddening, bull-headed dumbass Ray somehow talked him into drafting.

Spenser can be many things - stubborn, arrogant, aloof, withdrawn - but this behavior is strange, even for him. Jason’s mind has been evaluating the situation ever since Davis’s phone call, picking it apart and turning it to examine the possibilities from all angles, and he has come up with a few ideas as to why Clay might be acting this way.

“Did you do something to provoke or deserve this?” he asks abruptly.

Clay flinches, and then a wince crosses his face, causing him to briefly close his one eye that isn’t swollen shut. “No.” He sounds strangely small.

“So this isn’t your fault?”

The tiniest head shake.

“Okay. Then why the hell are you trying to protect whoever did this to you? Because we’re not stupid, Clay. We can tell this wasn’t a fair fight. You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

 _So are they,_ Jason adds silently, because if Spenser’s assailants had beaten him to death, there wouldn’t be a hole in the world deep enough for them to hide in.

With a hint of heat in his tone, Clay shoots back, “That’s not who-” He catches himself, slamming his mouth shut to cut off the words, but it’s too late. Jason has a good idea what the rest of that sentence was going to be.

“That’s not who you’re protecting?”

Clay’s gaze darts to the side.

“So you _are_ protecting someone.”

With obvious effort, Spenser makes himself look his team leader directly in the eye. “I can’t say anything else,” he states, his voice thick with some kind of emotion Jason can’t place. “Jace, I _can’t._ But it’s taken care of, okay? It was... a misunderstanding. It won’t happen again. I swear.”

Still not good enough, and never will be. Jason shakes his head. “You really think we’re gonna accept that?”

Clay shivers, hitching forward a little and shifting the blanket back around his bare chest. “No.” He sounds exhausted. “But it’s all I’ve got.” To Jason’s surprise, he doesn’t stop there, admitting, “Kinda hoped y’all wouldn’t even find out. I was gonna leave, call in sick, take a few days. Davis caught me by surprise.”

Jason pointedly flicks his eyes across the visible damage. “Pretty sure a few days wouldn’t have been enough, kid.”

Spenser sighs. “Yeah. I realize that now. Wasn’t... really thinking straight.”

His words are starting to slur a little. As much as Jason would love to keep pressing for answers, he realizes he’s unlikely to get anything else out of the kid right now - and they do need to take him to the hospital so he can be checked out.

As Jason is starting to turn away, one last question occurs to him. “If you didn’t plan to get caught here, then why did you even come here in the first place?”

“Felt safe,” Clay mumbles.

Okay, sure. Makes sense. He slept in his cage because he feels safe here, as opposed to...

Jason stops. He turns back. Judging by the way Spenser has gone even paler, he realizes he slipped up.

Jason asks slowly and clearly, “Clay, did this happen in your apartment?”

Spenser swallows hard. Then he gets out of answering by leaning to the side and throwing up all over the floor.

That brings everybody rushing back over like a flock of worried mama hens, and Trent declares that they need to get Clay some medical attention now. Once he’s done puking, they let him sit for a minute to let his stomach settle before trying to get him up and moving.

Sonny still looks pale and pissed off, but he emerges from his cage carrying the soft, oversized T-shirt he will never actually admit is his favorite. It’s got faded bluebonnets across the front, his mama bought it for him, and the entire team knows, but never mentions, that he wears it for comfort when he’s feeling especially homesick or under the weather.

He drops it in Clay’s lap and says gruffly, “Wear this. You can’t go to the hospital with no shirt on. You’ll traumatize the children.”

Clay looks down at it, then up at Sonny. He curls his fingers into the soft fabric, but protests, “I might get blood on it, or throw up again or-”

“Just put on the damn shirt,” Sonny snaps, and stomps away.

Yeah, he’s definitely mad at Spenser. But the shirt says his concern is outweighing his anger, at least for the moment.

Jason isn’t so sure the same is true of him. He wants to grab the damn kid by the shoulders and shake him until he tells them what the fuck _happened._ Might even do it if not for the fact that Spenser currently looks like one good shake could send him into a coma.

Later, Jason tells himself. They’ll finish dealing with this later. Once they know their boy is okay.

With Davis’s assistance, Clay manages to get the shirt on, and then they help him to his feet.

As Trent and Sonny steady Spenser and get him moving, Jason briefly drops back to talk to Lisa, saying quietly in her ear, “Have somebody check out his apartment. I think that might be where this happened.” He gets just the briefest glimpse of her eyes widening before he moves forward to join the others.

While he walks, Jason tamps down the burning anger, compressing it until it sits like a red-hot coal in his esophagus.

They’ll figure out what happened here. Sooner or later, Clay will surely cave. He’s stubborn, but so are his teammates, and they outnumber him - and outrank him. And that’s not even mentioning the forces of nature that are Lisa Davis and Eric Blackburn.

And when Clay finally gives in and they learn who did this? Well, then there’s going to be hell to pay.


	3. Chapter 3

It isn’t exactly the way Naima would have expected to find out that something has happened to one of her husband’s teammates.

It’s early morning, her overnight shift is technically over, and she’s tired. Should be on her way home already, but had to stay late to finish charting, which is what she’s doing when Ray finds her.

Her brain is so fuzzy and she’s so focused on the task that it takes her a few seconds to even register his presence, to hear him quietly repeating her name. She looks up then, smile already starting on her face. Just the sound of his voice feels like a shot of energy and warmth, pulling her back from the edge of exhaustion.

But then she sees his expression, and an icy jolt of worry races up her spine.

Naima pushes her chair back. Before she can even make it all the way to her feet, Ray, apparently reading something in her face, says quickly, “The kids are fine, baby. They’re still with your mom.”

Adrenaline has cut straight through the fog; everything seems sharper now, the lights overly bright. Naima takes a couple careful breaths to help calm her suddenly racing heart. Then she asks, “Who _isn’t_ fine?”

Ray clears his throat. “Uh, it’s Clay.”

There’s an instant of blank confusion, because she knows the team wasn’t spun up, and then her brain immediately jumps to other potential sources of injury: Car wreck? Training accident?

Those possibilities scare her, tangling in with other losses - Alana, Clay’s friend Brian - but Naima tries to hold tight to calm, because if things were really bad, Ray would be more upset than he is right now.

Evenly, she prompts, “What happened?”

Ray sighs, a sound so tired that it seems like _he_ should be the one who was up all night. “That’s the thing. We don’t know. It looks like somebody beat the hell out of him, but he’s refusing to tell us who.”

For all that he is obviously trying very hard to be the patient, reasonable version of Ray Perry right now, he can’t quite keep the frustration out of his voice.

Naima absorbs that information, accepts it, and prepares to face the situation as it is. “He’s in the ED?”

“Yeah. Triage nurse checked him over. Said it might be a little bit of a wait.”

Good. Naima would be much more worried if he’d been taken straight back.

“I’m almost done here,” she says. “Just give me 10 minutes to finish up.”

Ray hesitates, rapping his knuckles lightly on the counter. “Baby, you don’t have to stay,” he says. “I just wanted you to know, but if you need to head home and get some sleep-”

Naima is already shaking her head. Tired as she is, she should stay up if possible. Overnight isn’t her usual shift; she was just covering for a coworker. Sleeping all afternoon would only serve to throw off her circadian rhythm.

“I’m good,” she tells him, following it up with the soft smile that she knows makes him melt every time. “Just give me a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” Despite the circumstances, Ray smiles back at her, gentle and genuine.

It ends up being more like 25 minutes before Naima finally gets done charting and stands up, wincing at the pop of her back. Ray meets her, slides an arm around her and presses a kiss to her hair, and they go to the emergency department.

Clay is still in the waiting area, sandwiched between Sonny and Davis. Naima stutter-steps when she sees his face, misses half a beat, but quickly recovers.

His head is drooping against Davis’s shoulder, eyes closed. Well, right eye closed; his left is so swollen she doubts he could open it even if he wanted to. ‘Somebody beat the hell out of him’ seems like a pretty accurate summary of the situation.

After cataloging all the visible damage, Naima finally notices that Spenser is wearing Sonny’s favorite shirt, which for some reason gives her an overpowering urge to hug them both.

Apparently Clay is still alert enough to register Ray and Naima’s approach. He raises his head to give them a listless glance, then lets his eye slide shut. There’s an eerie emptiness to his demeanor that Naima doesn’t like. Clay Spenser is many things, some positive and some negative; ‘blank’ should never be one of them.

At Clay’s side, Sonny catches Naima’s gaze and gives her a desperately hopeful look that she is accustomed to receiving from her children - an expression that roughly translates to _Mom, help. Fix it._

With an internal sigh, Naima drops to a crouch in front of Clay, gently patting his knee to try to get his attention. “Hey,” she says, keeping her voice quiet in recognition of the headache he definitely has. “How are you feeling?”

For a minute she isn’t sure he is even going to answer. Finally he mumbles succinctly, “Sore.”

“I’d be surprised if you weren’t.” She glances up, meeting Sonny’s eyes again.

He jumps to his feet. “Uh,” he says. “We’re gonna go... Be. Over there. For a little while.”

The others catch on almost right away. Davis carefully disentangles herself from Spenser, then stands up and follows Clay’s teammates as they cluster around the vending machines at the far corner of the room.

Naima rises from her crouch and slides into the seat Davis just vacated, lightly pressing her shoulder up against Clay’s in an unspoken invitation for him to lean on her. After a few seconds, he does.

Clay Spenser is by nature incredibly independent, with his history of abandonment and forced self-sufficiency strengthening what was probably already an inborn trait. He also has a tendency to go to ground whenever he feels threatened; to shut down if pushed too hard. Even Naima, who usually prides herself on being able to find the right words, isn’t sure what to say to get through to him right now. How to approach this and have it end some other way than with her just running face-first into those walls Clay puts up around himself.

Nothing to do but try. Doing her best to keep her tone free of judgment or demand, she asks, “Clay, are you okay? Really?”

A shiver runs through him. At first he doesn’t answer. Then he whispers, “I’m not sure.”

Naima has just enough time to blink in surprise at the unexpected honesty before Clay draws a sharp, almost shocked-sounding breath and quickly follows it up with, “But I will be. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t always have to be okay, you know,” she tells him softly.

He doesn’t give any response to that at all. She pauses briefly, then moves on.

“Ray told me that you said you couldn’t tell us what happened, but can you maybe explain why?” When Clay stiffens, muscles tensing like he might draw away, Naima hurriedly continues, “I’m worried about you, and I’d just like to understand what’s going on here. Okay?”

Clay wilts a bit, letting his head droop down against her shoulder again. Relieved that at least he hasn’t completely shut her out yet, Naima waits out a tense silence.

Finally he says, “I can’t, because there’s someone I have to keep safe.”

“And you’re sure this is the only way you can?” Naima asks neutrally.

_“Yes.”_ His response, brimming with certainty, comes almost before she has even finished asking the question.

And oh, she wants to argue. She wants to tell him he’s being an idiot, because he is. Wants to ask him how _this_ could possibly be of benefit to anyone.

But she knows him, so she doesn’t say any of that. She thinks about it for a minute, and then she comes at the situation sideways.

“I know that protecting people you care about is important to you,” she tells him. “It’s a fundamental part of who you are, and you can’t ever erase that instinct or turn it off.”

Clay wearily lifts his head, giving her a narrowed-eye look that makes it clear he’s waiting for the _but._

“But,” she says, “you have to realize that the same is true of Ray, and Jason, and Sonny, and even me. How would you feel if I were the one hurt, and I refused to tell you who did it so you could make sure it didn’t happen again?”

Clay’s eye narrows even more. “That’s different.” He sounds annoyed now, on the edge of defensive, but at least he’s still engaging with her.

“Why?” she asks mildly.

He sighs so dramatically that it’s followed by a sharp wince, presumably due to jarred ribs. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you’re a civilian with no combat training whatsoever, and I’m a goddamn Tier One operator.”

“You’re right,” Naima agrees. “You are. I know you can handle yourself in a fight, and that is exactly why this scares me: because someone hurt you anyway. Badly. And if they did it once, I’m afraid they could do it again.”

He shakes his head slightly. “They... It won’t happen again. I took care of it. It’s under control.” When she starts to open her mouth again, he cuts her off, voice hardening: “That’s it. End of conversation.”

Trying not to let her frustration show on her face, she gives him a brief nod and then goes to join the others. Hopeful glances greet her. It’s with regret that she tells them quietly, “All I really got is that he’s protecting someone. Then he shut down. Hard.”

Jason looks straight at her, absently fiddling with the wrapper on his unopened candy bar. "What do you think?" he asks abruptly.

Naima glances over toward Clay, who is now sitting alone, drawn in on himself, arms wrapped around his own chest. “Honestly? I think he’s scared. And not for himself.” She turns her head back, meeting Jason’s gaze. “I think you need to be careful about how far you push him right now.”

Before Jason has a chance to respond, his attention gets diverted by Brock and Trent, who have just entered the waiting area. After taking a second to talk to Clay - who gives no apparent response - they head over to join the group around the vending machines.

“Did you find anything?” Davis asks them quietly.

They glance at each other. Trent blows out a breath. “We just looked inside, didn’t go in. Nothing broken that we could see, but there were a couple chairs turned over and some blood dried on the floor. Think you were right, boss. It happened there.”

“‘There’?” Naima breaks in. “You’re talking about his apartment?”

That gets her several nods, and she swallows back a surge of nausea.

God. Someone attacked Clay _in his own home,_ and he expects them to just let it go?

Keeping her voice low, Davis says, “We’re gonna have to make a decision on this, soon. Are we bringing in NCIS? What do we tell Blackburn?” She looks straight at Jason, making it clear that she sees this as his call.

He leans his elbow against the vending machine beside him, tilts his head to the side, and finally replies, “Let’s hold off for now. See if we can get better intel on exactly what it is that Spenser’s worried about.” He glances at each of their faces in turn, gauging their expressions. “If we call in NCIS, it can’t be undone,” he says simply. “And I get the feeling Spenser wouldn’t be inclined to trust us afterward. Don’t want to pull that trigger unless I have to.”

Seconds after that declaration, a nurse shows up and ushers Clay out of the waiting area.

Naima knows what comes next will take a while, and that her presence here is not required. Part of her wants to head home, but she knows the kids are already at school by now, leaving the house quiet - the perfect environment for a too-long nap that would ruin her chances of sleeping well tonight. Being here gives her a better chance of keeping her eyes open, so she stays.

Much later, when Clay finally reemerges with a sheaf of papers detailing the damage, it becomes very clear that he is incredibly lucky to be walking away from the brutal beating he refuses to talk about.

He suffered a concussion, two cracked ribs, a broken nose, a bruised kidney and too many contusions to count. As Naima suspected from the moment she saw how badly his left eye was swollen, he also has orbital and zygomatic fractures, but they’re small and minimally displaced, meaning he likely won’t require surgery. There’s no apparent damage to the eye itself.

All in all, it could have been so much worse.

It still feels more than bad enough.

Spenser is being released on the condition that he be monitored and cared for at home. Trent immediately volunteers to take him, which Naima appreciates; of course she would care for Clay, for any of her husband’s brothers, but she does need to try to get some rest before resuming her normal work schedule.

Having Clay stay at Trent’s place also gives them a little more time to figure out how to handle the potential crime scene that is Spenser’s apartment. If they _are_ going to notify NCIS and try to pursue any kind of actual investigation, the scene will need to remain as undisturbed as possible.

Jason and Ray confer, talk with Davis, bring in Blackburn. They’re obviously torn, struggling to make a call, trying to balance their need to protect their youngest against the bitter possibility of permanently losing his trust.

Naima goes over the situation again and again in her mind, trying to unravel all the tangled threads. Of course she understands the team’s need to protect Clay, and she recognizes their desire for vengeance. On the other hand, Spenser is an adult and has more than proven himself as a capable, reliable operator. Is it time to back off a bit and let him handle his own life? Especially if the alternative would likely create a rift in the team that could inhibit their ability to operate as a unit?

That evening, when Naima walks into the living room to find Ray sitting on the couch and staring blankly into the middle distance, she doesn’t even have to ask what he’s thinking about. She tucks herself in beside him and asks, “You trust Clay in the field, right?”

“Absolutely,” Ray replies without so much as a hint of hesitation. “With my life.”

Naima reaches over to squeeze his hand. “Then maybe,” she says softly, “this is the time when you’re going to have to trust him with _his_ life, too.”

Ray looks at her, a thoughtful crease on his brow. After a minute, he squeezes her hand back and goes to call Jason.

When he returns, it’s with a verdict: the group has mutually agreed not to pursue an investigation. They’re letting it go. With conditions.

Clay is not to live alone at any point during his recovery, or even afterward for as long as Blackburn and the rest of the team deem fit. If at any point Clay even suspects more trouble coming, he is to call for help _immediately_ and get himself to safety by whatever means necessary.

Spenser agreed to the conditions. Naima hopes that they will be enough to keep him safe.

Over the following days, her mind keeps wandering back to that moment when she advised Ray to trust Clay with his own life. Something about it haunts her, itching at the back of her mind.

She knows this call wasn’t made by her; all of Clay’s teammates, plus Blackburn and Davis, had their say. But Naima also knows that she impacted Ray’s thinking, and she is well aware of how much influence her husband has on his team, how likely the others are to listen to his advice. That means she bears some level of responsibility for the outcome of this situation, whatever it may be.

All she can do is hope that the counsel she gave won’t come back to haunt her.

_(Three months later, standing frozen in the corner of the room as her hospital’s trauma team fights to save her friend, Naima will look back on it as one of her bitterest regrets.)_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took forever. It turned out longer than planned, and also my brain decided it didn’t like words anymore.

Intel suggested there would be a maximum of five guards on the arms dealer’s house.

Stupidly, Ray actually _believed_ that.

Now, pinned down behind the ornate columns at the southeast edge of the mansion, he briefly risks breaking cover to return fire, and is rewarded by a sharp yelp and the thud of a falling body. “Eleven,” he mumbles to himself. The word is barely out of his mouth before a bullet whines off stone inches from his face, forcing him to drop straight down and roll as far to the left as he dares, hugging close to the massive marble pillar and trying to keep it between himself and the source of the fire.

“Twelve,” he says around a ragged breath.

The tangos are spreading out to flank him, getting better angles. Ray has taken out as many as he can, but there are at least five of them left alive and he’s alone. It’s only a matter of time now.

“Bravo One, Bravo Two.” Despite the rapid-fire race of his heart, Ray’s voice somehow comes out calm and steady. “Taking heavy contact. Not gonna be able to hold out for too much longer.”

The reply is almost instantaneous: _“Understood, Bravo Two. Estimate 15 mikes to make it back to your pos. Hold tight.”_

There are a lot of things Ray could say then, but doesn’t. He doesn’t tell them he doesn’t have 15 minutes; maybe doesn’t even have five. All he says is, “I’ll do my best.”

Knows Jason, and the rest of the team too, will hear that for what it is: a promise of effort, but not a guarantee of success. They’ll know it means he’s in a bad spot.

When Jason left Ray behind alone to pull security on the main entrance, it was under the assumption that they’d already eliminated all five of the exterior guards, and that most if not all of the remaining resistance would be encountered inside the mansion. The other tangos - seven so far, though Ray figures there will probably be more - popped up out of nowhere, with HAVOC issuing a warning just in time to prevent him from getting cut down where he stood.

So yeah, it’s shitty and unexpected and now he’s up against it, but Ray can’t and won’t ask his team to scrap the mission to come back for him. A child’s life is at stake, and a lot of other lives besides.

The little boy they’re supposed to rescue, his name is José María. He’s a month out from his fourth birthday - and as much as Ray tries to maintain professional distance, he couldn’t keep that from sticking inside his head, the image of big brown eyes and four fingers proudly upheld - and he is an American citizen. Six months ago he was kidnapped and removed from the country by his non-custodial father, who is not.

Parental abductions are sadly common, and typically not the sort of thing that gets addressed by DEVGRU. There’s just one tiny little detail that makes this case very different: José María’s father also happens to be an extremely successful and prolific weapons dealer.

The brass saw this as an ideal ‘two birds, one stone’ situation: rescue the kidnapped, endangered American child and return him safely to his mother, while also capturing a potential source of valuable intelligence (preferred) or eliminating a major threat (if capture doesn’t prove possible).

Everything was going great, right up until the moment a small army appeared out of nowhere and trapped Ray behind a pillar, leaving him with zero chance of even making it to the door alive.

The bullet comes as more of an inevitability than a surprise, but its impact is shocking all the same. The pain slams through Ray’s entire body, driving the breath from his lungs. He hunkers down, curling in on himself like a turtle, but there’s nowhere to go. Rolling any further either way will just take him out into the open, into the path of a dozen other bullets, and that will be it. The end.

After a few seconds, he gasps in a searing breath, squeezing his eyes shut against the brutal ache in his back. His armor caught it. He thinks. Pretty sure.

 _“-Two, sitrep!”_ Jason barks in his ear, which is when Ray realizes he must have either failed to respond, or somehow managed to accidentally key his radio at some point.

Ducking his head as another round pings off the patio near his cheek, Ray manages to rasp, “Still here.”

To his surprise, it isn’t Jason who speaks next, but Clay.

 _“Enough of this,”_ Bravo Six states tightly. _“I’m near the southeast corner, third floor.”_ And then he says four of the most terrifying words any other member of the team can hear coming from him: _“I’ve got an idea.”_

“Bravo Six-” Ray starts to say, warning in his tone.

Clay cuts him off. _“Finding a window. Give me 30 seconds. Hang on, Two. I’ve got you.”_

A line of fire rips across the outside of Ray’s bicep, and he curls tighter in a futile attempt to fit his entire body behind the protection of his armor. The realization that he is about to die, the vivid mental image of Naima answering the door and the sweet smile crumbling off her face when she sees the uniform and _knows_ , keeps him from arguing further.

Whatever _idea_ Spenser has, Ray can only hope it will save his life instead of unnecessarily ending with two dead operators rather than one.

Can only hope this isn’t just the latest manifestation of Spenser’s rekindled determination to prove himself in the aftermath of the beating they still know nothing about, other than the damage it left behind.

From high above comes the faint sound of shattering glass, and then Clay starts raining down hell on the tangos who’ve got Ray surrounded.

Spenser eliminates several within seconds, but it doesn’t take the survivors long to figure out where he is and redirect their aim upward.

Still firing, Clay comes on the radio. _“Bravo Two, got you covered. Can you move?”_

Ray manages to push himself into an upright sitting position, his aching back pressed against the pillar. He draws a shaky breath and says, “Affirmative.”

_“Get inside as soon as you can.”_

“Copy.” Ray’s legs won’t stop trembling, but he disregards that, getting them under him and climbing to his feet anyway. A couple of the tangos out in the jacaranda away from the patio are still engaging with Spenser, but he’s keeping them too busy to pay Ray any mind, and all the others seem to be-

Ray takes a single shaky step forward and damn near gets shot again.

Moving on pure instinct, he throws himself back against the column. The bullet passes so close by his face that he feels its breeze and hears its sharp bumblebee whine. The shot is closely followed by another, this one missing by a wider margin.

Okay, scratch that. One or two of the closer combatants must still be alive too.

Clay takes out the last couple tangos who were attempting to shelter in the tangled jacaranda, and then the world falls into abrupt, eerie silence. Ray leans his head back against the marble and inhales, smelling gunpowder and cut grass and over-sweet blossoms. He breathes in, out, and then Spenser asks over comms, _“Bravo Two, you good? Made it inside yet?”_

“That’s a negative, Six. Still pinned down. At least one tango left, and I don’t have an angle on him. Don’t think he does on me either, though, long as I stay put.”

He keeps his voice quiet and his head on a swivel, knowing the combatant can’t be far. Trying to make sure he’ll be ready if the asshole tries to sneak up on him.

There’s a pause. Ray can _feel_ Clay thinking on the other side of the radio. It makes his palms sweat.

 _“Wherever he is, I can’t see him from here.”_ There’s clear frustration in Spenser’s voice. After another brief pause, he says, for the second time in five minutes, _“I have an idea.”_

The nervousness escalates to alarm. Ray forces himself to hold steady, stay focused on his surroundings, keep his voice down when he replies, “Think I’m good for now. I can hold out until-”

 _“Stand by,”_ Spenser says, completely ignoring him.

Ray looks up, and that’s when he finally realizes exactly where his teammate is currently positioned. The window Clay came out through, it’s up on the third floor, and it’s got its own small balcony with a railing that looks about waist-high.

A railing that Spenser is currently _climbing up onto,_ presumably with the goal of getting a better view of what lies below.

Ray blinks. His breath freezes in his throat. For a second he can’t even believe what he’s looking at. When the instant of shock passes, he keys his radio and hisses in a sharp whisper, “Spenser! What the hell? Get down from there!”

Does the idiot somehow not realize how obvious a target he’s making himself?

Clay doesn’t even bother responding. Just keeps moving, swinging his legs over the rail and dropping into a sitting position, then lifting his rifle to look down the scope. His balance looks terrifyingly precarious. Forget being shot; a single strong gust of wind at the wrong time and he’s going to plummet three stories to his death, no bullets required.

Ray’s chest clenches. This is like a nightmare flashback from Jameelah’s toddler climbing phase, a memory of looking up to see that she’d scaled something she shouldn’t and realizing he was too far away to catch her if she fell. Except maybe worse, because at least Jameelah was never _three floors up and getting shot at._

In the end, Spenser finds his target at almost the same instant that his target spots him.

The two shots come so close together that they nearly overlap. Clay lurches, tips backward off the railing and disappears onto the balcony just below.

Ray is pretty sure he doesn’t breathe again until Spenser comes back on comms and announces, _“Bravo Two, you should be clear to move now.”_

The surge of terror shifts into knee-weakening relief, which itself is rapidly replaced by anger. Clay sounds fine. Barely even out of breath. The smugness in his tone makes Ray want to slap him.

Maintaining a steady, practiced grip on his Glock, Ray pushes to his feet. Grits his teeth and asks shortly, “You hit?”

 _“Nah,”_ Spenser says cheerfully. _“Pretty sure the bullet in his head threw off his aim. Recoil just knocked me off balance.”_

Ray bites his tongue hard to keep from snapping back, because now isn’t the time. Staying alert, he crosses the patio without further incident and makes it inside the mansion, meeting up with the rest of the team at the bottom of the gilded interior staircase. There’s a small, dark-haired boy hiding his face in Sonny’s neck, but the child’s father is nowhere to be seen.

Jason catches Ray’s eye and gives a slight shrug. “Dad didn’t cooperate. Had to put him down.”

The child is safe. That’s the important part. A threat has been eliminated, little José María is going home to his mama, and the entire team is walking away alive. That makes it a good op in Ray’s book.

(Which doesn’t mean he isn’t still mad at Spenser, but that can wait till later.)

‘Later’ ends up being on the flight home, after Ray has patiently endured being checked over by Trent. Their medic concluded that he has a badly bruised back and a shallow gash on his arm, but nothing broken and no signs of internal damage. Probably won’t even need stitches. All in all, Ray knows he’s incredibly lucky to have escaped that situation with minimal damage.

Shortly after Trent gets done fussing, Spenser wanders over to join them, bearing beer and a smirk that makes the anger Ray has been suppressing rise from a simmer to a boil.

Before he can stop himself, he asks sharply, “Want to tell us what the hell that was back there?”

Clay blinks. The smile disappears, replaced by a careful sort of blankness. “Pretty sure that was me saving your life, Ray.” There’s an edge in his voice, a challenge. He shifts his weight like a man getting ready for a fight.

“And I’m grateful for that,” Ray shoots back. “I am, but-”

Mouth twisting into a bitterer version of the earlier smirk, Spenser cuts him off. “You know what? I think I feel like drinking over there instead.” He turns on his heel and stalks away, dropping down to sit next to Brock and Cerberus at the far end of the plane.

Ray looks up to find both Trent and Jason staring at him with identical raised-eyebrow expressions that say, _Explain._

Trying to keep his voice even and free of the defensiveness that wants to creep in, Ray tells them, “Y’all didn’t see what went down back there. Spenser climbed up on a damn railing while getting shot at. Pure blind luck that he didn’t get himself killed. And it wasn’t even necessary. I’d already tried to tell him I’d be fine till y’all got back.”

And okay, he doesn’t know that for _sure._ Maybe the tango would have found a way to sneak up on him and cap him in the head before he could react, but that wasn’t the probable outcome. It sure as hell wasn’t likely enough to be worth the risk Clay took.

Trent and Jason exchange glances, and then Jason sighs and says in a resigned tone, “I’ll talk to him.”

Good. Maybe the kid will actually listen to him. Probably not, though.

How long is it going to take for Spenser to finally understand that they are _never_ going to be okay with his dumbass, borderline suicidal stunts? Every time he somehow manages to survive one of them, he gets this self-satisfied expression that seems to say, _See, I didn’t die, so now you can’t get mad at me for taking stupid risks._

That’s where he is and always will be wrong. Ray can _absolutely_ be mad at him for unnecessarily risking his life - whether that’s by climbing up on a balcony rail while getting shot at, or by getting the living hell beaten out of him back home and then refusing to let them help make sure it won’t happen again.

Naima keeps urging Ray to let that go, and he’s been trying. In the aftermath of the incident, Spenser did everything they asked of him, without complaint, and it’s been three months now with no sign of any further trouble. Honestly, Clay has seemed… happy, like some weight has been lifted off his shoulders that none of his teammates even knew he was carrying.

It’s just hard for Ray to get out of his head, the memory of that vicious boot-shaped bruise over Clay’s kidney. The knowledge that he hadn’t been safe in his own home, and the gnawing frustration of not being allowed to help. To _do_ something. In the aftermath of Manila, at least they’d been able to unleash hell on everyone responsible for leaving their brother bleeding out on the pavement. Being forced into helplessness and inaction doesn’t sit well with any of them. It’s not in their nature.

By the end of the flight, waking up stiff and sore after a good six hours of uninterrupted sleep, Ray is ready to admit to himself that he’s maybe still a little on edge, and his reaction to Clay’s stunt might have been a bit stronger than necessary as a result. He means to try to talk to him then, clear the air and make things right, but Spenser manages to slip away before Ray has a chance to catch up with him.

The team has plans to meet at the bar for dinner and drinks that evening, so Ray figures he’ll talk to the kid then - if he shows up.

That is the one weird thing about Clay’s behavior ever since the incident: he’s become strangely frugal. Not that Spenser was ever really a big spender, but he is straight-up pinching pennies these days. Hesitant to eat out because of the cost; bundling up and turning down the heat when they all know damn well he likes his apartment warm. It’s an odd little behavior change none of them have managed to figure out, but they’re willing to let it go as long as it doesn’t end with him in the hospital again.

When Ray gets home, the house is empty and quiet. The kids will be going straight from school to a sleepover at their cousins’ house, and Naima won’t be getting home from work until around 19:00, so he has the space all to himself. With the ache in his back worsening, he ends up taking some ibuprofen and sleeping for a few more hours, then heading over to the bar around 17:00.

Walking in, he scans faces: Jason. Trent. Sonny. Brock. Of course everyone is already here except the one person he really wants to talk to.

Taking a seat next to Sonny, Ray asks, “Spenser planning to come?”

Quinn rolls his eyes. “Said he was, but only because I promised to pay for him.” There’s more fondness than frustration in his tone.

They order, they chat, and Clay doesn’t show. Sonny texts him but doesn’t get a response. One by one the others try, with the same result.

 _He’s sulking,_ Ray tells himself, swallowing down the knot of worry that’s trying to form in his throat. It’s only been just over a month since they finally let Spenser start living alone again. He should know better than to go dark like this.

“You checked him over, right?” Ray asks Trent.

Sawyer nods. “Yeah. He was fine. Wasn’t hurt at all.”

After a few more minutes pass, Ray is about ready to step away and try calling Spenser rather than just texting. Before he gets a chance, his phone rings. He grabs for it, brow furrowing when he sees Naima’s name on the screen. She wouldn’t typically be calling him before the end of her shift. Maybe she got off work early for some reason?

Rising stiffly to his feet and taking a few steps away from his raucous teammates, Ray answers. “Hello?”

_“Ray. Baby…”_

Naima’s voice is trembling. The bottom drops out of Ray’s stomach. He puts out a hand to brace himself against a rough-sawn bench. “What is it?”

(Please God not the kids. Please let them be okay.)

On the other end of the line, Naima draws a shivery breath. She says, _“It’s Clay.”_

The sliver of relief flips instantly into panic, because… no. Dammit, _no._ Not again.

Naima is still talking. _“He’s here. He was brought in by ambulance. I’m listed as his emergency contact in his phone, so they called me.”_

“How bad?” Ray’s voice sounds distant to his own ears, and oddly calm.

She hesitates an instant too long. He closes his eyes.

 _“Last I saw, they were working on him,”_ Naima says, trying for a sort of bravely neutral tone that Ray sees right through.

“Working on him how? Working on him like… like doing CPR?”

Another pause. _“Yes.”_ Her voice cracks on the single word. She sniffles a little, and then adds, _“Ray… they’re saying it was an overdose. An opioid overdose, fentanyl maybe. Does… did he show any signs of having problems with…”_ she trails off, unable to even finish the question.

An _overdose?_ Drugs, rather than another attack?

Ray clenches his fingers around the rough wood until splinters bite sharply into his skin. His mind races, ripping through months worth of memories, trying to draw out absolutely anything that could make this make sense.

The mysterious beating by an assailant Clay wouldn’t name. The small hints that he might be having money trouble. The fact that he suffered severe nerve damage in a bombing less than a year ago, and likely dealt with more residual pain than he let on.

Could they possibly have missed something this big?

Ray desperately wants the answer to be no, but Spenser can hide things with the best of them when he wants to. Damn kid is made of moats and padlocked doors, and the secret he was guarding may have just ended his life before his brothers, who love him, who are supposed to have his back, ever even got a chance to try to help.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Ray tells his wife. “Call me if you hear anything, okay?”

She promises she will. He hangs up, takes a deep breath, and turns back to his teammates to try to find a way to break the news.


	5. Chapter 5

When Clay doesn’t show up and also doesn’t respond to a single one of Sonny’s increasingly annoyed texts, it puts him a little on edge. That’s probably why he pays closer attention than he usually would when Ray steps away from the table to take a phone call.

Deep down Sonny hopes it’s Clay on the other end, though he knows that’s unlikely; if Spenser were going to call someone right now, it wouldn’t be Ray, not after that scene on the plane. Still, Sonny keeps an eye on Bravo Two, and can’t help the reflexive spike in his heart rate when Ray suddenly sways and has to grab for a bench to keep from falling.

Sure, Trent checked Ray over after the mission and said he was fine, but what if things have changed since then? What if Ray has started bleeding internally or something? Naima would strangle every last one of them to death with their own intestines if they let her husband keel over and die a few feet away at a bar, and that’s not how Sonny plans to go out.

He makes it halfway to his feet before being halted by Trent’s hand on his arm. “Pretty sure he’s okay,” Sawyer says quietly. “Just give him some space, okay?”

With an exasperated sigh, Sonny sits back down.

Despite his calm tone and demeanor, Trent is also watching Ray intently, which is when Sonny finally clues in to the possibility that there may be another explanation for Perry’s sudden near collapse.

The cause might not be physical at all. It could be based on whatever was just said on the other end of that phone call.

Thinking about what kind of bad news Ray could be receiving sets Sonny’s mind to racing. Please don’t let anything have happened to Naima or the kids. Losing Alana damn near wrecked them all. They can’t go through that again.

Ray seems to steady himself, quietly finishes the conversation, and then turns back to face them, straightening with a slight wince to stand on his own two feet. He looks like he’s facing down the enemy while Winchester. He looks worse than he did back at that damn mansion, right after getting shot.

“Hey.” Ray’s voice isn’t even all that loud, but his tone carries a sort of gravity that cuts straight through everything else. Jason and Brock’s conversation cuts off abruptly, and they join Trent and Sonny in focusing on Bravo Two.

Ray takes a couple steps forward, eases back down into his seat with a poorly suppressed wince that speaks volumes about how much his back must be aching, and takes a deep breath. Raising his gaze to look straight at Jason, he says, “Naima called me. It’s... uh, something has happened to Clay.”

Jesus _Christ._

Not again.

Sonny is going to kill him.

Jason’s jaw snaps shut with an audible click. Through gritted teeth, he asks shortly, “How bad?”

“She didn’t know for sure.” Ray responds without hesitation, but the way his eyes briefly dart to the side makes Sonny’s gut twist with sharp nausea.

Naima might not _know,_ but judging by Ray’s reaction, she must at least suspect that it’s bad. Worse than before, maybe. Probably.

It’s Brock who asks, “How did she find out?”

Ray looks down, sighs through his nose. “He was brought in by ambulance, and they called her. I guess she’s his emergency contact.” When he raises his gaze again, the expression on his face looks so haunted that Sonny automatically pulls away a bit, bumping up against the backrest of his chair.

Whatever’s coming next, he already knows he doesn’t want to hear it. Knows just as surely that he has to.

Despite the pain he’s obviously still in, Ray squares his shoulders and sits up straight. With very little inflection, he says, “Naima told me they were pretty sure Clay overdosed on opioids. Fentanyl, maybe.”

For a minute afterward, nobody talks. Even the ambient bar noise, the laughter and music and over-loud conversation, seems to fade to nothing. Sonny stares until the burning in his eyes finally forces him to blink. He waits for the punchline, for Ray to say _just kidding,_ but it never comes. Bravo Two just gazes steadily back at them, waiting for it to finish sinking in.

“That’s not possible.” Sonny’s voice comes out shaking with what sounds like anger, surprising even him, because the only emotion he really registers feeling is a sort of dizzy confusion. “No way in the world he’d...”

“There’s got to be some kind of mistake.” Brock adds his support. As usual, the quietest member of Bravo sounds very calm, but there’s a rare stony quality to his voice. Brock Reynolds doesn’t often find a hill he’s willing to die on, but when he does, not much on earth can move him. He’s currently straddling a chair, his hands locked together atop the backrest, knuckles white. “We would have noticed,” Brock continues, then shifts his focus to his best friend. “Trent would have... Trent?”

That’s when Sonny notices that Sawyer hasn’t moved or said a thing since Ray first started talking.

Abruptly, Trent pushes back from the table. Without a single backward glance, he heads for the door that leads out to the parking lot.

There’s only the barest instant of hesitation before the rest of them follow.

All their confusion, betrayal, anger, whatever they’re drowning in right now, it can all wait. Right now their brother is in trouble, and no matter what the cause, they need to be there for him.

The drive to the hospital passes in a blur. Naima meets them there. She looks exhausted, lips pressed together, but she’s composed. She hugs Ray, then moves straight from him to Sonny, which gives him an idea just how bad he must look right now.

Bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet like a keyed-up boxer waiting for a round to start, Jason asks shortly, “Any news?”

Naima shakes her head. “Nothing new.” Softer, she adds, “Sorry.”

Jason doesn’t acknowledge that, just rubs a hand over his mouth and then orders, “Tell us everything you know.”

“Why don’t we sit down,” Naima suggests in a tone that’s gentle but firm. Sonny figures it probably isn’t a good sign that she wants them sitting for this, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on it, just follows her to the chairs in the ED waiting area. It feels surreal to be back here three months later, once again waiting for news on their resident dumbass kid who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

Once everyone is sitting, Naima takes a deep breath. Never one to beat around the bush, she starts with the hardest news first: “When they found Clay, he wasn’t breathing. There was no way of knowing for sure how long that had been the case.”

Sonny’s diaphragm seizes up, and for an instant he can’t breathe either. The room feels like it’s expanding away from him, the distance between chairs growing greater, all sensory input receding into a gray abyss.

He can’t lose his best friend. Not like this.

Naima’s voice sounds fainter to him now, but she’s still talking. Sonny drags in a painful breath and forces himself to focus on her words.

“Paramedics suspected an OD, so they administered multiple doses of naloxone at the scene. Last I heard, Clay did have a heartbeat but still was not breathing on his own.” She finally wavers a bit, stopping to gnaw at the edge of her lip and stare at the floor with tired, glassy eyes before continuing, “He’s very strong, and our trauma team here is excellent. They’re doing absolutely everything they can to get him stabilized.”

Sonny knows Naima is offering the only reassurance she has, doing the best she can for them just like she always does, but it really doesn’t make him feel much better. Of course the trauma team is trying; that’s their damn job. The fact that they’re trying doesn’t mean they’ll succeed - and even if they _do_ succeed, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get Clay back without some kind of brain damage or something.

That line keeps replaying in his head: _There was no way of knowing for sure how long that had been the case._

If it was more than a few minutes, the Clay they get back might not be the same one Sonny said goodbye to on the tarmac just earlier today.

Nobody says anything. Sonny manages to focus enough to glance at his brothers’ faces. They all look as shellshocked as he feels.

After the silence stretches for a few seconds, Naima clasps her hands together in her lap and continues quietly, “That’s not all.”

There’s _more?_ That wasn’t enough?

“Clay wasn’t found alone. There was a woman with him. Apparently he called 911 for her, not himself. She was brought in at the same time he was. I didn’t recognize her.”

That takes a second to sink in, and then Sonny feels heat pooling in his upper chest, like there’s a fire just got lit between his collarbones.

A woman? What the _fuck?_ Was that what all this was about?

After the way things ended with Stella, and then after the fling with Rebecca didn’t turn out so hot either, Clay swore he was off dating for a while. Now this? Could he possibly have been that stupid?

When no one else speaks up, Ray asks quietly, “What did she look like?”

Naima shakes her head. “They were working on her, so I didn’t get a very good look. She was white. Dark hair. Mid 40s, maybe, but it was hard to tell. I don’t know.”

“Where were they found?” The sound of Brock’s voice startles everyone a bit. “Was it at Clay’s apartment again?”

Another head shake. “I asked one of the paramedics and he said it was outside of town. I didn’t recognize the area.”

The more they learn, the less Sonny feels like he understands.

The conversation dies off after that. Jason bounces his knee. Brock leans back in his chair, massages his temples, and then appears to do something disturbingly close to meditation, which he probably learned from that hippie Kairos.

Sonny paces over to the vending machines, already knowing what’s in them from the last time he was here. He stares. After a while he leaves without buying anything, because his stomach feels too unsettled and acidic to think about eating.

Eventually Naima goes back to see if she can get any news. When she returns, it’s with a tentative smile that lights the whole damn room as far as Sonny is concerned.

“He’s stable,” she says. “Still pretty out of it, but there’s no sign of any long-term damage. It looks like he’s going to be okay.”

Sonny is glad he’s already sitting down, because he knows if he were standing, his knees would have wobbled under him like a newborn foal’s.

Dear sweet baby Jesus, _thank you._

Later he’s gonna be pissed off. Right now he’s mostly just relieved - okay, with a tiny little edge of pissed off.

Naima’s smile dims a bit. “Unfortunately, the woman who was brought in with him didn’t make it,” she tells them. “She had overdosed as well, and it appeared to have happened some time before Clay’s did. She didn’t receive the naloxone in time.” Pulling out her phone, she swipes to a picture, then holds up the screen for all of them to see. “She didn’t have any ID. Do any of you recognize her?”

The woman in the photograph is pale-skinned, and her hair is a harsh sort of dark that looks dyed. Unlike Clay, who appeared to be the picture of health right up until the minute he was dying of an opioid overdose, this woman more closely matches Sonny’s mental image of a long-term drug user, her face hollow and drawn in a way that makes it impossible to guess her age. Could be anywhere from 35 to 55.

Sonny has definitely never seen her before. One by one, his teammates indicate the same. Not one of them recognizes this woman who was with Clay when she died.

The more Sonny goes over it all in his head - the unfamiliar woman, the timeline of how it all played out - the less any of it makes sense.

So the woman’s overdose happened before Clay’s. He called 911 for her, and then he... What? Decided to overdose too, just for the hell of it?

Deep down Sonny is aware he’s biased in this matter, that he doesn’t want to admit to himself there’s a legitimate possibility his best friend could have become addicted to opioids after Manila and hidden it from all of them, but surely even an objective party would agree that something feels off here.

They wait some more. Davis shows up, and Blackburn, and they both get looped in on the situation. Davis promises to reach out to local police to find out if they have anything on the mystery woman.

When the team finally gets to see Clay, he’s groggy and out of sorts, and there’s a sickly grayish undertone to his skin. Apparently all that naloxone isn’t agreeing with him. Damn sight better than being dead, though.

He cracks his eyes open, gives them a single listless look, and then resolutely closes his eyelids again and doesn’t say a word.

Trent is the first one to step forward. “Hey, buddy,” he says in that soft, steady tone he always uses to ground them when they are sick or injured. “It’s good to see you.” He pats Clay’s upper arm and gives it a gentle squeeze, then quickly jerks his hand back in confusion when Clay hisses sharply and pulls away.

“Sore right there?” Trent asks.

“Yeah,” Clay whispers, his voice scratchy and raw.

Trent lifts the sleeve of Clay’s hospital gown a bit, and his eyebrows damn near jump off his forehead. Seeing that reaction, the others quickly move forward to see for themselves.

It’s the injection site, the needle mark clearly visible in the middle of it - surrounded by a big, already ugly-looking bruise.

Sonny quickly, automatically scans Clay’s visible skin. No other strange bruises or injection marks.

Hope swells dangerously in Sonny’s chest, because that bruise... surely Clay didn’t do this to himself. This has to be something that was done to him. The thought of that makes Sonny want to be out there hunting the bastard down _right this minute,_ but somehow it’s still not as bad as the alternative.

Clay is awake now, which means they can ask him, can demand to finally hear the full story now that he broke the terms of their deal in about the worst imaginable way. Sonny just can’t even figure out which question he should start with.

The one Jason chooses is, “The woman you called 911 for, who was she?” His tone is stern, bordering on harsh, making it clear that not answering is not an option.

Clay’s sullen silent act vanishes instantly. His eyes snap open and fix on Jason’s face. _“Was?”_ he asks hoarsely. “Is she...”

Jason takes half a step back. Softens his voice just a bit when he says, “She didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

Sonny doesn’t even know how to describe what Clay’s face does then. He just knows it’s an expression he’s never seen on him before, and he hopes to God he never has to see it again.

Both hands white-knuckled in the blankets, Clay stares straight ahead and rasps in a monotone, “Please leave.”

Ray, trying to play peacemaker despite his and Clay’s recent disagreement, jumps in before Jason has a chance to pop off. “Spense, come on. We just got here, and I’m pretty sure you owe us a-”

“Go. Please. Just give me a minute.” Clay’s eyes dart toward them, but without focusing on any individual face. He looks like a trapped animal. _“Go!”_

The attempt to raise his voice starts him coughing, and then he leans over and throws up onto the floor, keeping one arm wrapped around his undoubtedly sore ribs.

If nothing else, it gets him his wish. A nurse arrives and quickly ushers them out of the room so she can get her patient calmed down and cleaned up.

After staring at each other for a few seconds in absolute bewilderment, they migrate as a group back to the waiting area. Which is when a few key things finally, and just a few minutes belatedly, become clear.

Davis meets them, her face a shade paler than usual, the corners of her mouth downturned. Beckoning them in close around her, she says quietly, “The woman found at the scene? They’ve identified her through police records. Her name was Kara Lorenson. But before she divorced and changed it back, it was Kara Spenser.” She pauses, takes a slightly unsteady breath. “Um, she was Clay’s mother.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait! I’ve had a lot going on, and the muse has been uncooperative.
> 
> Warning for vague allusions to past child abuse and neglect.

Clay opens his front door, and all of the breath jolts out of his lungs like he has just hit the water from 60 feet up.

He was expecting Sonny. Brock, maybe. The last person he thought he’d find in the hallway, shifting nervously from foot to foot, was his mother.

It’s been more than six months since the last time Clay laid eyes on Kara Lorenson. She looks worse - thinner, her cheeks hollowed out, hair dyed an unnatural shade of dark that makes her nearly translucent skin seem even paler.

“Hey, b-” she quickly swallows the next word that tries to come out, but Clay already knows what it was going to be: _baby._ He’s damn near 30, and Kara hasn’t truly been his mom for the better part of 25 years, but apparently she still can’t break the habit of calling S01 Clay Spenser the same thing she used to call her towheaded, earnest little boy.

Kara worries at the fraying cuffs of her worn, threadbare jacket, which is nowhere near warm enough for the weather. Her fingers are bone-thin, cuticles chewed raw. “Can I come in?” she asks quietly, her voice trembling with what sounds like more than cold.

Clay nods. Moves aside, lets her step over the threshold, and closes the door behind her.

Kara stops beside the sofa, her eyes flicking erratically around the room without really seeming to register anything she’s looking at. When the silence between them stretches to awkwardness, Clay clears his throat and asks, “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

As soon as the words are out, he wishes he could take them back. Kara’s face crumples. She quickly turns her head to try to hide the reaction, letting her hair shield her face. Wiping at her eyes, she says shakily, “That’s a fair assumption to make, I guess.”

Somehow, whenever he goes months or years without seeing his mother at all, Clay always manages to forget this part: how being around her, seeing her sad or upset, never fails to make him feel like everything inside his chest is trying to collapse into a black hole. His heart and his hands ache to fix this, to make it better, but he already knows anything he tries won’t be enough. It’s never enough.

Clay is entirely focused on his mother, trying to figure out what to say next, when his front door slams open and three men armed with handguns burst into his apartment.

Though caught off guard, Clay reacts quickly. He holds his own, disarming two of the men and landing a lot more punches than he takes, only to be halted by the third man’s voice: _“Hey!_ I’ll kill her!”

Clay’s heart rate, calm through the fight, skyrockets. He jerks his gaze to the sofa, where his mother is sitting, pale and frightened, hands clasped tightly in her lap. The third man stands over her with a pistol aimed at her head.

Instantly, Clay stops fighting.

The two men he’d been holding off grab him by the arms, restraining him roughly. In the aftermath of the chaos, the sudden quiet feels disorienting, and Clay’s world seems to have narrowed to isolated slivers of sensory input: the sting of busted knuckles; the sight of his mother’s wide green eyes; the harsh sound of his own ragged breaths.

He struggles to reorient himself, to come up with some way of defusing the situation, but the man with the gun speaks first. Breaking into a nasty smile, he says, “Well, damn, Kara. This must be him, huh? The boy you’re so proud of?”

Kara’s mouth twists, anger abruptly overtaking the fear. Jerking her chin up to look at the man, she snaps, “This is between you and me, Matthew. Leave him out of it.”

The man, Matthew, smiles wider, his watery blue eyes burning with a wild light that Clay really doesn’t like. “Now, darlin’, it’s too late for that. You already brought him into it.” He shifts his attention to his other captive. “Clay, ain’t it?” he drawls.

Matthew’s aim hasn’t wavered from Kara’s temple, so Clay reluctantly nods, playing along.

“Well, Clay. Here’s the thing about your mama. She is a _real_ charming woman when she wants to be. Downright generous with her... affections.” The grin turns lecherous, and Kara goes ashen, her gaze darting to the floor. Matthew watches Clay, clearly hoping for a similar reaction from him as well, but Clay doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Keeps his face still as stone, free from any hint of surprise or anger.

A brief scrap of thought flits past the edge of his mind - _You think you’re the first creep she ever brought home?_ \- but he doesn’t let it within a mile of his mouth. Hearing that would cut Kara to the bone, and there are places Clay just doesn’t go, not even inside his own head.

Upon receiving nothing but a blank stare, Matthew sighs a little and continues, “Be that as it may, there’s only so much a man can overlook when he’s trying to run a business, and it turns out your mama owes me money. A _lot_ of money. And she ain’t been real keen on paying. Have you now, Kara?”

She stares up at him, trying for defiance. Her chin wobbles. “I told you-”

“You told me you’d get me the money. You told me that last month, and the month before, and the month before that, and I told you I was all out of patience, which you simply do not seem capable of understanding.” Matthew’s gaze flicks back to Clay. “Well. Maybe I’m just gonna have to _make_ you understand.”

Kara catches on almost instantly. “No! Matthew-” she tries to bolt up from the couch, and the man shoves her back down, grinding the gun barrel into her temple.

Heart in a vice, Clay calls, “Mom! Mom, stop! It’s okay.”

He can’t watch her die like this. He _can’t._

Kara’s desperate gaze finds Clay’s. She draws in a breath that stutters like a frightened child’s. She stops struggling.

Matthew looks back up at Clay, all traces of humor gone, his eyes obsidian-sharp.

“Come on, man,” Clay says, keeping his voice calm and even. “There’s no need for anybody to get hurt here. You said she owes you money? How much-”

The first punch from the side cracks Clay’s cheekbone, setting his world alight in pain and jagged color.

The second blow hits him in the nose. His knees buckle, and the men turn loose of his arms, letting him fall hard. The back of his head bounces off the floor. His remaining vision briefly blinks out.

 _Get up,_ his brain screams, _GET UP GET UP,_ but his mom- he can’t fight back, because-

They start kicking him.

Ribs crack. When Clay curls up, trying to shield his head and abdomen, the assailants target his kidneys instead. He gags in agony.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Clay registers that Kara is sobbing and begging, but he can’t make out her words over the thud of kicks landing and the roaring in his ears.

Finally, Matthew barks, “Enough!”

Everything stops, leaving Clay curled on the floor, shaking. He manages to flatten his palms, try to push himself up, but the room tilts and his vision swims, and he decides it’s probably best to stay put for the moment.

“Clay?” Kara’s tear-clogged voice trembles. “Baby, talk to me.”

Clay coughs. “’M good,” he mumbles. Manages to raise his face to look at Matthew, letting every ounce of hatred he feels seep into that gaze.

The man laughs. “You know, Kara, I don’t think your kid likes me.”

Clay doesn’t dignify that with a response. He lets his head drop back and eyes slide closed, trying to gather himself and shake off the dizziness.

Matthew continues, “I hope you have a better understanding of just how not-patient I’m feeling at the moment. You’ve got exactly one week to come up with my money, and if you don’t, well, your boy here will be real sorry you didn’t.”

He turns his focus to Clay, voice sharpening into a tone that could cut glass. “And you, Junior, look like the kind of genius who might decide to involve the police, so let me make things real clear. In the unlikely event that the cops ever find enough evidence to hit me with charges that stick, I will swear on the sweet baby Jesus that Kara here transported and distributed drugs for me, and I’ll provide records to prove it. If I go down, she goes down with me. Clear?”

Clay spits blood, grinds his teeth, and gives a curt, furious nod that makes his head throb even harder.

Matthew smiles. “Good! That’s real good. I feel like we’re all startin’ to get along. Ain’t that right, Kara?” Abruptly he lowers the gun, pats Kara roughly on the tousled hair, and then looks at his men and tips his head toward the door. Seconds later he and the goons are gone, leaving the apartment quiet but for the ragged, overloud breathing Clay is still trying to get back under control.

As soon as the door clicks shut in their wake, Kara launches off the couch and drops to her knees at Clay’s side, tears streaming down her face. “Clay? Baby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t- I didn’t know he would-”

She reaches out. Reflexively, Clay flinches, then feels terrible when he sees the raw, naked pain on her face, the way she quickly aborts the motion and draws back into herself.

“Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay.” He sits up, waits for the merry-go-round to stop, and spits out another mouthful of blood. No broken or missing teeth that he can feel, but there are some flaps of skin hanging loose inside his mouth, the sharp taste of copper so overpowering that it makes his gut twist with nausea. His nose is still bleeding too, red dribbling off his chin and down the front of his shirt.

Kara brings him a kitchen towel and an ice pack, and Clay gingerly sits in a chair and tries to take stock of himself. His entire body hurts like hell, but he doesn’t _think_ there’s anything critical. A few cracked ribs, one messed-up cheekbone, maybe a concussion, but mostly those assholes did a damn good job of inflicting pain without causing severe damage. He isn’t sure whether that had more to do with luck, intent, or his own training and instincts.

“Do you need a hospital?” Kara has mostly managed to stop crying, though her voice still shakes. “Tell me the truth.”

Clay starts to shake his head, winces, and lifts the towel-wrapped ice pack back to his swollen-shut eye. “No, I think I’m okay. Just sore.” He fixes his good eye on her face, takes a breath deep enough to set his ribs burning, and says, “Mom. We need to call the police.”

Kara goes ghost pale, white to the lips. She sits down across from him, clamping her hands down on the edge of the table. “You heard what he said.” The tears start up again, leaking from already swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “Clay, I’ve already got all these priors for possession. If they get me on distribution, I’ll go away forever. Jail was bad enough, baby, you know it was. I couldn’t survive prison. It would kill me.” She’s panicking, her breathing gone shallow and choppy. She sways in the chair.

Clay backs down. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“Okay, okay. We’ll figure something else out. Mom, look at me. You’re not gonna go to prison, okay?”

Kara’s frantic, erratically darting eyes manage to find his face.

“Breathe with me. In and out.”

He models slow, deep breaths for her, ignoring the relentless throb of his cracked ribs and badly bruised abdomen and sides.

Clutching at her chest, Kara struggles to match his rhythm, to inhale and exhale on cue. Gradually, she calms.

Clay’s head aches so damn bad, and all he really wants right now is to have backup. Someone to check over his injuries, stand at his side, help him decide what to do. He wants to not be facing this alone, again.

After all these years, everything he’s accomplished, Clay still feels like he’s stuck right back where he started. He feels like that terrified 6-year-old who once held a mirror in front of his mama’s mouth to try to make sure she was still breathing.

He didn’t know what to do then, and now he’s a competent, highly trained, grown-ass Navy SEAL, and he _still_ doesn’t know.

If Clay brings his brothers in on this, he can’t imagine that they’ll be willing to let it go. They’ll want to either involve the police or handle it themselves, and he can’t let either of those things happen. He can’t let them risk their careers for him, and he also can’t risk living in a world where his mother hanged herself in a prison cell because of choices he made.

So he sits, holds the ice pack to his throbbing eye, and tries to come up with a plan.

First priority: getting his mom somewhere safe.

Having weathered the panic attack and come out the other side mostly coherent, Kara looks at Clay, really looks at him, taking in the bloodstains and the bruises. Her face twists in misery. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he’d followed me. Sweetheart, I never meant for you to get hurt.”

(She never does.)

Clay bites down on the automatic reassurances that want to escape. In Kara’s grief and guilt, he sees the faintest glimmer of a possible opportunity, and the fact that he feels a little bad about manipulating her doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try it anyway.

“There’s one way you could make it up to me,” he says.

Kara tilts her head ever so slightly to the side. She waits, not making any promises.

“Go to rehab.”

Her eyes instantly dart away from his - and of everything that’s happened in this unbelievably shitty evening, _that’s_ what makes him want to crumple in despair.

It takes her just a few seconds to come up with an excuse. “I _can’t_ leave right now, baby. If Matthew comes after me and I’m not here-”

Clay cuts in. “Let me take care of that. Give me his number. I’ll arrange payment. Then he won’t have any reason to fuck with either of us.”

She blinks at him. Voice small, she says, “Clay, I can’t ask you to-”

“You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”

Kara shakes her head. Looks down at her pale, thin hands. “You don’t know how much I owe him.”

“So tell me.”

She does. Somehow, he manages to keep his wince internal. The debt is more than he was expecting. He’ll have to clean out his savings pretty much entirely - including the money he long ago set aside to pay for Kara’s rehab, in hopes that she would one day agree to go.

This complicates things, but he’ll figure it out. He has to.

Clay spits a glob of half-congealed blood into the corner of the already ruined kitchen towel. “Here’s my proposition,” he says. “You go to rehab. Tonight, if possible. I’ll contact your asshole dealer and arrange to pay off your debt. You repay me by _staying in rehab_ and getting better. Deal?”

Slowly, reluctantly, Kara nods.

And even though he _knows_ better, Clay can’t help the small, bright twist of hope that blooms in his chest. Maybe this will be the time that things will finally turn out different. Maybe seeing her child beaten half to death right in front of her was the final wakeup call Kara Lorenson needed.

There are things to do then, and even though everything hurts and his thoughts keep trying to float away from him, Clay does them. First, he retrieves his carefully curated list of potential rehab centers and works down it until he finds a place with an opening. All of the facilities he picked out have a heavy counseling and mental health focus; Clay long since figured out that the drugs aren’t the true problem here. They’re just his mom’s attempt to slap a toxic band-aid over the mental bullet wounds she has been slowly bleeding out from ever since having a baby broke her brain. Unless that underlying issue is addressed, getting clean is unlikely to ever stick.

Once the rehab center has been chosen, Clay arranges transportation for Kara, sends her off with a stiff, careful hug and a kiss on the forehead, and then grits his teeth and forces himself to call up Matthew and figure out the logistics of paying off Kara’s debt. 

That conversation is every bit as miserable and infuriating as expected, with Matthew throwing barbs about Kara being so useless that she has to have her kid handle her shit, but in the end they come to an arrangement. When Clay asks for a guarantee that he and his mother will be left alone from here on out, the dealer snorts and says, “Why the hell wouldn’t y’all be? I got a business to run. No point in fucking with folks who don’t owe me nothing.”

The man is an absolute psychopath, but Clay actually believes he’s probably telling the truth on this. With payment obtained, Matthew now seems dismissive and distracted, ready to move on to terrorizing some other unfortunate family.

Clay hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, and realizes he has finished everything he had to do tonight. With no tasks left to accomplish, all his remaining energy drains away and the pain comes roaring in. He hunches over, arm around his ribs, and tries to focus on breathing. His ears ring.

He should go to bed, get some rest, call in sick in the morning and hope a few days off will fade the bruises enough that he can pass them off as having come from a scuffle at a bar. That’s what he _should_ do, but he looks around his apartment, at the closed front door and the blood on the floor, and just... can’t.

Clay knows it’s illogical, that he should be _fine,_ but being in his apartment right now makes him feel like his skin is trying to crawl away, so he drives himself to base. He’ll just grab a few hours of sleep in the cages, enough to clear his head, and then he’ll go home. No one has to know he was ever there.

While settling into his hammock, so sore and stiff that he feels about 90 years old, Clay finds himself unable to shake that sense of hope that flared up the moment his mom finally, _finally_ agreed to go to rehab.

Yeah, today sucked. Based on the way he feels, the next few days or even weeks are probably gonna suck too. His teammates will be pissed at him for getting hurt, and they’ll probably pick up on the fact that he isn’t telling them the whole story.

But if it means Kara will get better, this will all be worth it. A beating is a small price to pay for the chance to finally atone for ruining his mother’s life by existing. Logically Clay knows the wreckage of Kara Lorenson’s world wasn’t his fault, that he had no choice in the matter, but it’s still a heavy thing to carry. He has spent his whole life wishing for a way to somehow fix the person he broke before even taking his first breath.

If he plays things right, if he keeps Kara safe and the police out of it, maybe this, at last, will be the opportunity he’s been looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized the final chapter was turning out absurdly long, so I’ve split it into two chapters. Hope to have the next one up a bit sooner, but no promises.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long delay! Needless to say, life has been a bit crazy and stressful for everyone lately. I hope this chapter finds all of y’all, and your loved ones, safe and well.

Naturally, Clay’s plan goes sideways.

He even set an alarm on his phone to make sure he’d be off base by the time the rest of the guys arrived. He just didn’t account for Davis showing up well before the ass-crack of dawn, finding him, and going all mother hen.

So much for his hopes of hiding out until the bruises start to fade.

The team reacts pretty much exactly like Clay figured they would, and keeping the truth from them is even harder than anticipated. They’re pissed off, but beneath all that frustration lies an undercurrent of confusion and betrayal that makes him feel about three inches tall.

Anger Clay can deal with, but his brothers, the men he trusts more than anyone else on earth, are _hurt_ that he won’t tell them the truth and let them help. That’s the part that’s hardest to swallow.

The thing is, though, that Clay’s desperate newfound hope is as brittle and fragile as it is powerful, and it comes paired with a matching fear so intense he can barely remember how to breathe. He can’t lose this chance of finally making things right; he just _can’t._ That conviction gives him the strength to power through every lecture, question, order, betrayed glance. He even survives being dragged to the hospital and having Naima unleashed on him, which he’s pretty sure violates the Geneva Convention.

As Clay expected, the verdict on his physical condition is basically ‘busted up but will be fine eventually.’ What comes as a surprise is that, after all the interrogating and guilt-tripping and drama, his team ultimately makes the decision to step back and let this go. He spent days terrified they were going to ruin everything by bringing in NCIS and pursuing an investigation, and then they just... didn’t.

There are conditions, of course, but Clay’s relief is so overpowering that he agrees to them without even paying much attention to what they are.

It doesn’t take him long to start regretting that - particularly the ‘never living alone’ part, because his teammates will barely let him wipe his ass without supervision. Clay is sore and exhausted and well on his way to going completely stir-crazy, and while he loves his brothers, having them constantly in his space makes him want to gnaw off his own limbs to escape.

Part of that is the stifling, claustrophobic stress of not being allowed to hide, which is always his first and strongest instinct when he’s hurting. Another part of it is frustration at feeling like the weak link, the one who’s pulling everybody down, who keeps _needing_ without being able to give anything back in return.

With every time Trent gets up in the night to check on him, every moment Ray has to babysit him instead of spending time with Naima and the kids, Clay feels more useless. Helplessness isn’t something that has ever set well with him - not when he was a child who couldn’t fix his mother, and certainly not now.

He _aches_ to be back in the field. To prove to Bravo that they were right to trust him; that he can carry his own weight, and theirs too if need be; that he’s an asset, not a liability.

The instant Clay is given permission to start rehabbing, he throws himself into it with at least as much ferocity as he did after Manila. As his recovery progresses with no signs of further trouble, his team mercifully starts to back off and give him some breathing room. He’s allowed to return to his apartment, first with supervision, then alone once he’s more or less healed.

With his savings now cleared out, figuring out how to pay for his mom’s rehab, on top of his own bills, sucks just as much as Clay had anticipated. He copes by pinching pennies the way his grandparents used to; it seemed they were always short of money and long on mouths to feed. The old habits are surprisingly easy to slide back into - with the unforeseen side effect of making him miss his grandparents like his heart is trying to crawl out of his chest and find its way back to them.

That could also partly be this whole thing with his mom, because her parents were the only people on earth with whom he ever felt comfortable talking about her. With them gone, there’s no one.

He thinks about telling his brothers. Really, he does. Sometimes he looks at Sonny or Jason or Ray and opens his mouth, but the words can never make it past the knot in his throat. He isn’t sure there even _are_ words. Doesn’t know where to start; how to make it make sense inside his own head.

And maybe most of all, he’s afraid he’ll tell them the truth, and then he’ll look at their faces and see the same thing he always saw in Ash’s: judgment. Disgust. An exasperated eye roll that dismisses Kara Lorenson as nothing more than a junkie, a drain on society, as though this is something she _chose_ instead of just her broken way of trying desperately not to drown.

He’s afraid he’ll open up to his brothers, but they’ll never be able to see past Kara’s addiction, and her criminal record, and Clay getting hurt on her account, to the woman who lies beneath all that pain.

That’s why his grandparents were the only people he could really talk to about his mother: because he knew they loved her just as much as he did. She was their baby girl. They better than anyone knew the _real_ her, the woman from before, the person who after Clay’s birth only surfaced in bits and pieces, like splintered boards floating up from a shipwreck.

He could tell his grandparents about the hard things without fearing that they would lose sight of the fact that this was the same woman who saw beauty everywhere, in mud puddles reflecting the sky and in tiny lizards hiding in tree bark. The same woman who kept journals full of tissue-thin pressed flowers instead of words; who marked the passage of seasons and years with the memory of things that had bloomed in them.

The woman with a soft, smoky voice, who only sang when she thought no one could hear her - or when her young son asked her to.

The woman who, before she sent Clay off to Africa, spent three straight nights crying like her heart was breaking in half, because she had finally come to understand that giving him up was the only way to keep him safe.

That’s still one of Clay’s clearest early memories: lying on filthy carpet, his ear pressed to the crack at the bottom of the door, listening as Kara sobbed, not knowing how to help. Only knowing that it was his fault.

It has never been only his father’s shadow that drives Clay. It’s his mother, too. It’s the burden of everything she lost because of him.

The weight of starting out with that kind of debt, it’s impossible for Clay to even put into words how it rests on a soul. How desperately he feels the need to make something of himself, to be better, to be _the best_. To make it all have been worth it, somehow.

Finally finding a way to get his mom some real help? It’s a start. So he keeps his head down, works his way back to full strength, scrapes and saves so he can keep paying for Kara’s rehab, and prays every night to a God he barely believes in that she’ll _stay there._

Clay recovers and rejoins his team, and if he feels like he’s perpetually on fire with the need to make this up to them, with the fear that feels like hope and hope that feels like fear, he mostly manages to hide it. Mostly.

Okay, he maybe gets a _little_ reckless, and then Ray gets pissy even though it was his ass Clay saved, but everyone walks away alive. Once Clay cools down from being mad at Ray for being mad at him, he figures he should probably count it as a win. And if a little recklessness is what it takes to prove that he’s useful, to remind his team that he has their backs no matter what and that they were right to trust him, it’s more than worth it.

It’s soon after walking back into his apartment from that mission that Clay receives the call he has spent the past three months expecting and dreading.

His phone screen shows an unfamiliar number. His throat seizes up. He answers.

 _“Clay?”_ Kara’s voice is thready, shaking. _“Baby, I messed up.”_

Clay’s eyes sting. He closes them. Calmly, he asks, “Where are you?”

 _“I shouldn’t have left,”_ she rambles. _“I’m sorry. I’ll go back. I’ll do better, I swear.”_

The strangled sound Clay tries to stifle isn’t quite a laugh. He takes a single slow breath, then lets it out. “Mom,” he says. “Where are you?”

Slow and halting, she gives him a location. He rummages around, finding a pen and an old stack of yellow post-it notes. The sight of them twists his gut with well-worn sadness. He shoves it aside - all of it, his failings both then and now - and focuses on writing down the address.

Kara apologizes more, tears creeping into her voice. Clay calmly assures her that he’s on his way, and that everything will be fine.

The property sits outside of town. He’s never been there before. The house is weathered, its paint peeling, and it’s surrounded by a scarecrow thicket of old appliances and rusting vehicles. Broken glass glints in the bare dirt of the yard.

Clay knocks, tries the knob, finds it unlocked. Eases the door open, calling, “Hello? Mom?”

On the squalid carpet at the far edge of the living room, Kara is lying on her back, eyes closed, dark hair fanned out around her still face.

For an instant everything stops. Clay Spenser, an elite warrior trained for decisive action and unconditional competence, freezes in place. His fingers slip off the door and it swings into his shoulder, the light impact finally jolting him out of the shock. He crosses the room to his mother. Calls her name, but she doesn’t move or open her eyes.

Clay grips her wrist and waits, deafened by the thunder of his heart in his ears. Kara has a pulse, weak and thready but there.

She isn’t breathing.

With no blood, no sign of any trauma save her pallid skin and the blue of her lips, Clay has a pretty damn good idea why, and he would sell his goddamn soul for some Narcan. He doesn’t have any, so Kara needs an ambulance _right fucking now._

Clay fumbles in his pocket for his phone and the crumpled post-it note with the address. He calls 911, gives the location, stays on the line just long enough to confirm that someone is coming, and then drops the phone so he can start CPR.

And that’s when he gets blindsided.

It should be impossible for someone to catch him this badly off guard, but between his focus on the 911 conversation and his panic about his mom _not breathing,_ Clay never even realizes anyone is there until he’s knocked down from behind and a needle is stabbed into his arm.

Instinctively, Clay fights, trying to twist away, but the son of a bitch plants a knee in the middle of his back and holds him down for the few seconds it takes to finish depressing the plunger. Then the assailant pulls the needle out, lets the empty syringe fall to the filthy carpet, and steps back.

It’s Matthew. Of course it is.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he says, not sounding even a tiny bit sorry. “But this was your mama’s fuck-up, and I ain’t gonna go down for it.”

He heads for the door. Clay could follow, but they both know he won’t. Not with Kara still on the floor, motionless and turning bluer by the second.

Clay scrambles up to his knees, ignoring the way the world tilts around him and the crackle of white noise in his ears. He stacks his hands atop Kara’s chest and starts compressions. At 30, pauses to give her two breaths, watching out the corner of his eye for the rise and fall of her chest that means her airway isn’t obstructed.

He tries to go back to compressions, but his arms have gone numb and his fingers uncooperative, sensation replaced by radio static. He forces his way through it, positions his hands again, but can’t muster any real force. Darkness eats away at his blurring vision. He loses count, and then his arms give way and he crumples to the side.

No. _No._

He has to help her. She needs him.

Clay drags in a labored breath, consciously forcing his chest to expand. “Mom!” His voice comes out both slurred and sharp with panic. “Mom, come on! Wake up!”

Kara doesn’t move. He fights his way up one last time, sucks in air and leans down to force it into her lungs.

Her chest rises, falls. She doesn’t breathe again after. The last of Clay’s vision swirls away down a drain. This time, he barely feels himself falling.

“Mama,” he whispers. “Mama, it’s okay. It’s gonna... be...”

In the last instant before the quiet takes him, he fumbles for Kara’s wrist.

Her skin is ice cold.

* * *

When Clay wakes up in the hospital, sick and miserable and alone, some part of him already knows. He just can’t face it yet, not while every breath feels like fighting through enemy lines, not while his skin still prickles with sweat and nausea and panic, so he doesn’t ask. He drifts, half conscious, the epicenter of motion and chaos. Gradually breathing grows easier, but the knot of pain beneath his breastbone doesn’t go away.

After a while, his teammates come in. They’re restrained at first, probably trying to work out just how bad off he is, but some detached part of him catalogs all the telltale signs that they’re angry. Clay doesn’t have the capacity to care. Not right now.

He just needs some time. He just needs to sleep and not think and not... not _know._ What happened. What he did.

That illusion of numb not-knowing crashes down on him the instant Jason asks, “The woman you called 911 for, who was she?”

That single word - _was_ \- hits Clay like the impact of a bullet. The pain in his chest seizes, blade-sharp.

Who was she?

She was a woman who whistled back at birds, and who always kept the windows open when it stormed. She was volatile and haunted and flawed and hurting.

She was his mom. She tried to be.

Clay has to know for sure, so he somehow summons his voice and asks. Jason’s response, the tacked-on apology making it clear that he’s starting to figure out there’s something that they’ve missed, steals what’s left of the breath in Clay’s lungs.

His mother is gone, fully and forever, and it’s his fault.

Clay needs space so desperately that it feels like drowning. His teammates are confused at first, reluctant to back off, but after Clay’s nausea finally wins out, they go and let the CNA clean up and fuss over him with good-natured practicality. She leaves, dimming the lights, and finally he’s alone with the truth.

Everything inside his head feels so jumbled. Clay can’t sort through the tangle of all the different people he’s supposed to be: grieving son, steadfast SEAL, loyal brother, self-sufficient survivor. He doesn’t know how to fill any of those roles right now, let alone all of them at once.

So for a little while he just lets himself be none of them. Be nothing.

He’d expected to cry. Still has the blanket wadded up in his hands, ready to cover his face with. Tears never come, so Clay sits and stares at the wall instead, and his head buzzes with emptiness.

 _Shit,_ he thinks suddenly, with a panicky sense of having forgotten to do something important. _Grandma and Grandpa. I have to tell them she’s gone. How will I ever explain-_

His brain catches up. They’re gone too. The daughter they loved and worried about, they’ll never know her end. 

Clay sleeps. He wakes up feeling numb, but less sick. When the members of Bravo filter back in, they’re even more subdued, and they come one at a time. Jason is first, and he opens and closes his mouth a couple times before saying simply, “Davis told us. I’m sorry. We didn’t know.”

Clay looks down at his useless hands. “How could you have?” His voice comes out hoarse and bitter. “I didn’t tell you.”

He should have told them. He should have done _anything_ except what he did. All that time and pain and money spent trying to keep Kara out of prison, and it turns out she might have been better off there. At least she’d probably still be alive.

Jason looks like there’s something he wants to say, but he clamps his jaw shut and just pats Clay’s arm instead. Clay knows better than to think he’s getting out of the lecture; it’s just been deferred until later. Great. Something to look forward to.

After his teammates have been shooed back out, Clay talks to police and NCIS. He tells them Matthew’s name, which unsurprisingly turns out to have been an alias, and everything else he knows about the man, which isn’t much.

Basically: he’s a drug dealer and a psychopath, and he murdered Clay’s mother.

Even if Kara was the one who chose to inject herself with a dose of opioids her body could no longer handle - and Clay isn’t completely convinced that that’s the case - Matthew, or whatever his name is, put her in the grave. Clay could have kept her alive until the ambulance got there. He’s sure of it.

Of all the things he’s experienced, he thinks this might be one of the hardest to move on from: trying to do CPR while the world slipped away from him, and his mom with it.

Once the aftereffects of the fentanyl and naloxone have worn off, Clay gets discharged and allowed to go home. He keeps feeling numb while reality sinks in, a thread at a time. He gives his team a bare-bones, monotone account of what happened and why he made the choices he did, because they deserve at least that much. He decides what to do with his mother’s body.

Part of him would like to just have her cremated, scatter her ashes somewhere peaceful in the spring once flowers start blooming, but deep down he knows that’s just what would be easiest for him, not what Kara would have actually wanted. Kara would have wanted a memorial: lasting proof that she had lived and been real and _mattered._ Kara would have wanted a headstone next to her parents’.

So that’s what Clay chooses, though it strains his already strained finances even further. There will be a grave. A small ceremony. Kara Lorenson’s name written in stone.

The afternoon before the funeral, Sonny drops by with beer, barges right through Clay’s attempts to hint that it isn’t a good time, and installs himself on the sofa. Quinn was angry for a long time after this all started, showing said anger through little barbs and distant behavior, but there’s no hint of that left now.

Sonny opens Clay’s beer for him, hands it over, and then says with rough-edged, warm sincerity, “I sure am sorry about your mama.”

Clay nods, dropping his gaze to the bottle in his hand. “Guess I finally finished the job,” he says, quiet and bitter and without really meaning to speak at all.

Sonny leans forward, setting down his own beer with a clink. “Clay.” His voice is steady and gentle. “This ain’t your fault. You did what you thought was the best thing for her.”

“But it wasn’t,” Clay shoots back.

“Easy to look back now and say that, but you couldn’t’ve known it at the time. You fought like hell for your mama. She died because some asshole drug dealer tried to kill you to cover up what he’d done. That ain’t on you. It’s on him, and he’s gonna pay for it.” The gentle tone vanishes at the end there, twisting into something darker that prickles Clay’s skin.

“You mean the police will catch him,” he says.

Sonny nods agreeably. “Of course.”

Quiet hangs between them for a moment, and then Quinn asks, “Do you want to talk about her? What she was like, I mean?”

For some reason, after everything, it’s that simple question that almost breaks the dam. Clay takes a breath, opens his mouth to answer, and then drops his face into the crook of his elbow and struggles to cling to composure.

“Okay,” Sonny says softly. “That’s all right. You can tell me later.”

After Sonny has left, Clay finally makes himself go through the scant bundle of belongings the rehab center sent him; the things Kara left behind when she ran away.

There isn’t much. A necklace. A few items of clothing. An envelope that looks at least a few years old, judging by its yellowing, bent edges. Across the front, in Kara’s neat, loopy handwriting, it says ‘Petty Officer Clay Spenser.’

Clay has written letters like this. He knows his brothers have too; he’s long since made peace with the possibility of one day receiving one of theirs. He just never expected to get one from his mother.

The world seems to have gone hazy and distant, the envelope the only thing that remains in focus. Clay finds his way to the couch, sits down, pulls out the single folded sheet of plain notebook paper, and starts reading.

_Dear Clay:_

_If you’ve received this letter, I guess it’s finally over. There are so many things I want to say to you but don’t really know how, so I’m going to try to keep it simple. I want you to know that I’m sorry. For all of it, including whatever circumstances led to you holding this letter right now. I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger and that I wasn’t a better mom. You deserved so much and I could never give it to you and that is the single greatest regret of my life._

_I want you to know that I love you. I loved you before you took a breath. I loved you the first time you opened your eyes, and smiled, and threw a tantrum. I loved you always, no matter what, and I’m sorry that it wasn’t enough. I wouldn’t have traded you for anything in the universe. I hope you never doubt that._

_I want you to know that I’m so, so proud of you. I will always regret that I couldn’t give you the world like I wanted to, but it is a comfort to look at you now and know that you never needed it to be handed to you; you were strong and determined enough to go out and take it all on your own. You have grown to be an incredible man despite all my failures, and I could not possibly be more proud._

_That’s the other thing that comforts me, I suppose: Knowing that once you put this letter down and go back to your life, you will be just fine. I have watched you weather blow after blow and get right back up again, and this will be no different. You will go forward. I just hope you won’t ever forget how much you are, and deserve to be, loved._

_A few last wishes: If I have any belongings left, keep what you want and give everything else away to someone who needs it. Lay me to rest with Mom and Dad. Bring wildflowers every once in a while if you’d like, but remember that life is for the living - so live well and burn bright, my sweet wildfire son._

_Love you. Always._

_\- Mom_

Clay carefully refolds the letter, tucks it back into its envelope, and sets it aside. Then the cracks widen, the dam craters, and he lays his head down on the table and cries until his face is resting in a puddle.

He doesn’t expect a lot of people to be at the funeral. Kara’s parents, obviously, are already gone. She had no siblings and very few real friends, and her ex-husband knows better than to show up unless he wants to get murdered by his own son. Kara did have one cousin she was close to growing up, but he’s on his third round of cancer treatment and unable to make the trip.

That pretty much just leaves the preacher and Clay.

And, as he should have anticipated, Bravo. Some members of Alpha, too.

They’re all already waiting when he arrives at the gravesite where the simple service will be held. Clay steps out of the car, and there they are: Jason. Ray and Naima. Sonny and Brock and Trent. Derek and Full Metal. Blackburn. Davis.

Clay’s vision blurs, and he has to blink hard a few times before continuing on.

He holds himself together pretty well until he gets up close enough to see the coffin and the grave waiting to swallow it, and then sudden, irrational panic claws at his throat.

Kara is - _was_ -terrified of the dark and of being trapped in small spaces. She used to sleep with all the lights on. How is he supposed to let them put her at the bottom of that little hole, alone, forever? How is he supposed to just walk away and leave her there?

“Clay.” Davis sounds understanding, her voice very soft. She touches his elbow, pulls him down into a hug, and holds onto him while the wave of emotion crests and finally starts to recede.

Pulling back, he whispers “Thanks,” and she gives him a nod and the tiniest hint of a smile.

Whatever the preacher says, Clay barely hears a word of it. He squints against the fine, cold mist gathering in his eyelashes, breathes in air that tastes like rain-wet earth, and doesn’t move until Sonny gently nudges him to let him know it’s time.

Clay steps forward and carefully places the small wreath atop the coffin.

Kara loved wildflowers best, but it’s the wrong time of year for them. He did the best he could, picking out store-bought blossoms that he thought she would have liked, then weaving them together into a braided tangle of green stems and vivid colors. It’s vibrant and messy and imperfect, like her.

The service ends, and then it’s time to walk away and let the dead rest, but Clay just... can’t. He stands rooted to the ground, staring at the coffin. Feels like the heavy gray sky has come down on him and he might never be able to move again.

Sonny slides an arm around his back. Ray pats his shoulder, saying quietly, “You’re good, brother. We got you.”

His brothers guide him forward and walk with him, one step at a time, out of the graveyard and back to the world of the living.

* * *

_**Two Months Later**_

_Someone knocks, loud and persistent. ‘Matthew’ flings open his front door and snaps, “What?”_

_The man on the porch, casually leaning on a shovel, spits tobacco juice and smiles wide._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s all! As always, thank you all for reading.


End file.
